archival photo print, Swarovski crystals, washi tape, doilies, and puffy paint
An artist talk and exhibition of “IT’S FUN TO BE CLASSIFIED”, a series of lens-based mixed media collages. This work explores the history and contemporary legacy of categorization, oppression, erasure, and misrepresentation of transgender individuals within archives– particularly lesbian and gay “community” archives.
Through incorporating rare archival materials and original research, this series synthesizes the artist-archivist’s own experiences as a practitioner and user of archives whose gender/sexual identity (a gay trans man and drag queen) remains ‘unclassified’ by any standardized system, even those dedicated to gender/sexual identity. This is an experience marked by moments of identification, recognition, companionship, humor, beauty, and joy, but ultimately characterized by pervasive discomfort, mislabeling, objectification, infantilization, and deep loneliness.
photocard prints, Swarovski crystals, washi tape, yumekawa stickers, acrylic paint, and toploaders
archival photo print, pearls, washi tape, yumekawa stickers, acrylic paint, and commercial ephemera
